Sixers in 4 wrote:SpurNani wrote:The problem with Jokic is he’s a one way star - offensive only. So you have to get limited offensive guys like Gordon, KCP, etc to make it all work.
When Denver had offensive minded pieces around Jokic like Jerami Grant, who is a 20+PPG scorer in the league, their defense wasn’t good and the team wasnt as good.
100 percent.
People are just glossing over the impact of not having any shot-blocking. Jokic is a massive plus obviously but he is very hard to build around because the rest of your teammates have to be solid 1-4 defensively.
I think the Nuggets honestly have done a great job of that. I don't like their bench but they have guys who fit what they need around Jokic.
There’s some validity to this point, in that the optimal way to build a team around Jokic is surely to build some defensive solidity around him.
But I wouldn’t overstate the degree to which the Nuggets have done this. Jamal Murray is an offense-minded player who is not a particularly good defender. MPJ is an offense-minded player who is not a particularly good defender. Meanwhile, KCP and Aaron Gordon are defense-minded players. Their bench is very limited in general, but last year was probably more offense-minded and this year is more defense-minded. Overall, the roster around Jokic is not really defensively-slanted. It’s really quite balanced.
And I think that’s an important point, because despite having a supporting cast that isn’t actually defensively slanted, the Nuggets have had a good defense. The Nuggets ranked 8th in defense this season, and had a -2.3 rDRTG (negative numbers being good). Notably, their Defensive Rating against top 10 teams this season was the 2nd best in the NBA, behind only Minnesota. Meanwhile, they held both their playoff opponents below those teams’ regular season offensive efficiency—holding the Lakers to a 3.5 lower offensive efficiency and the Timberwolves to a 1.0 lower offensive efficiency. And last year, they had a slightly above average regular season defense (-0.6 regular season rDRTG), followed by having a good playoff defense (around a -2.5 to -3.0 rDRTG in the playoffs).
In other words, I don’t think we should exaggerate the team-building required to get a good defense with Jokic. The Nuggets have really not actually slanted the supporting cast towards defense, and the team has still had a good (but not completely elite) defense.